“Doesn’t look like much does she?”
I’d planned to feign weakness, but the truth was that throwing away the alpha mantle had taken a lot more out of me than I’d expected. So there was nothing pretend about my passiveness as one heavy human body after another jumped down to squelch through the muddy pit beside me.
“Looks can be deceiving.” This was Quill’s voice, his southern drawl no longer sounding so charming now that I understood the depth of his depravity. “So pay close attention.”
Then the cowboy shifter’s firm tone flickered into laughter as he caught sight of my underwear. I hadn’t taken the time to rip the thin layer of cotton off my wolf’s body during the minute recently spent in human form, instead choosing to focus on hunting down and then donning Crew’s collar during my last seconds alone. Now, as I realized how absurd my bedraggled wolf must look in her Tuesday undies, I regretted the oversight.
“Nice granny panties,” the nameless sidekick said, slipping one finger beneath the waistband to pull it taut, then letting the elastic snap back against my fur.
I almost growled, but restrained myself in time. Sorry to disappoint, boys, I thought instead. If I’d known you were going to kidnap me and stuff me in a hole in the ground, I would have sprung for classier lingerie.
“Let’s get her up where we can see her,” Quill commanded, the moment of merriment past. My supposed pack mate clearly remembered how I’d taunted him with Lia’s stolen lips a few minutes earlier, and even my days-of-the-week panties weren’t enough to sidetrack him from his mission.
Two sets of rough hands settled beneath my shoulders and hips, and my wolf twitched despite my efforts to remain completely unmoving. At least I wasn’t two-legged while these monsters touched my bare skin. Instead, I felt absurdly grateful for the animal fur that buffered my wolf from our enemies’ malicious fingers.
Then my stomach swooped as I was heaved up to land on the edge of the hole. Until this point, I’d kept my eyes squeezed tightly shut, feigning slumber. But with my captors still in the pit below me, I knew my chance to escape had finally arrived.
Rousing my wolf with an effort, I reminded the animal of her marching orders as succinctly as possible. I’m not going to weigh you down, I told her. Because you’ll need all the fleetness of foot you can muster. We’ve got to find cover before we’re recaptured.
She and I both knew that the wolf brain would only be responsible for the first few minutes of our retreat. After that, I’d take back over and buy us more time, keeping the SSS members away from Lia and Savannah for as long as possible. But, for now, our success or failure rested on the head of the wolf.
My animal half didn’t answer in words, but I felt her willingness as I carefully disentangled my human mind from her senses and dropped down her throat toward her belly. I didn’t want to go so far that I wouldn’t be available if she needed me. But I also wasn’t willing to repeat my usual mistake of not trusting the animal half to command her own skin, slowing our reaction time in the process. We’d need every bit of skill we could muster to tease the SSS males without being caught.
Then my lupine form was on her feet, running through wet grass that felt heavenly beneath our mud-caked paws. The sensation was distinctly different from my usual experiences of either being in charge or being entirely lost within the darkness of her insides. This time around, I could see our surroundings, albeit at a distance, the sensations similar to watching a movie rather than participating in the action.
As I’d suspected, my prison pit had been located beside a small house surrounded on all sides by trees. An inholding in the national forest, most likely. Probably no more than an hour’s drive from the hotel where our pack holed up, I mused.
Which meant we were roughly eight hours distant from Wolfie’s territory. If I’d had a body, my stomach would have sunk into my shoes. As it was, my human brain drifted a little lower down the wolf’s esophagus as I realized I’d made the wrong decision. I should have tried harder to track down local assistance rather than spreading my net so far afield. My new task of keeping Quill and his buddies busy for a third of a sun cycle seemed like an eternity.
“Shit! She’s awake!”
Speak of the devil. I didn’t look back, but from the sounds behind me I gathered that the second male had emerged from the pit and caught sight of our lupine form streaking away through the rain. Then Quill must have joined his comrade aboveground because energy began gathering in the air between us.
The tingling, hair-raising sensation was similar to the moment just before lightning struck, when electricity accumulated in the earth in preparation for spearing through the unwary. Although not as natural, our current reality was equally dangerous. My ex-captor was preparing to hit my wolf form with an alpha compulsion that her submissive nature had no chance of fighting against.
Based on the evidence of his elongated shift and his supposedly gentle persona, I hadn’t thought the cowboy shifter had it in him to order another wolf around. But now I realized that his supposed weakness had only been part of the act, just like his drifter persona and the tale of lost love. All had worked together to lower my defenses and prompt me to accept the cowboy shifter into our clan against both Lia and Hunter’s better judgment.
Now, I could finally sense the truth—Quill wasn’t a passive, laid-back shifter like Cinnamon. Wolf senses didn’t lie, and my animal body’s fur was standing on end even as she strained to put more distance between us and the power-hungry male.
We only had one chance of escape left. If I could squash my wolf as I’d done for most of my life, then the upcoming alpha compulsion would roll right off our back just like Hunter’s had when the uber-alpha appeared in my life for the first time. Quill’s superior dominance wouldn’t matter if I had no lupine nature to vanquish.
So I clawed upwards, struggling to dislodge my animal brain before Quill could recapture us with a single word. But it was too late.
“Halt,” the cowboy shifter commanded, the directive calm and even as if he knew exactly how his prey would respond.
And he was right. I guess all those stolen halfie hearts paid off, I thought as my wolf’s muscles froze to the earth.
Once again, we’d been caught effortlessly in Quill’s trap.